After being told that the train was booked up for the next 4 days the only other option we had was to get a VIP bus from Surat Thani bus station which took a total of 22 hours...we dreaded the thought of this as we didn't know what to expect....as we got on we were shocked, leather seats with a built in back massager, lots of leg room with the seats reclining into beds at night, tv with English films and snacks and drinks!....Chiang Mai here we come!!!

We arrived to our hostel where we were greeted by our owner called 'V', his wife and their dog called 'Wee wee'! We later found out that 'Wee wee' means little penis in Thai!...They instantly made us feel welcome and introduced us to everybody else that was also staying there. As quick as we had got into the hostel we were back out with a group of people that were going to Wat Phra That Doi Surhep temple which is on the top of a mountain which had really nice views across the city!...that evening a big group of us went out to see a caberet show where some of the ladyboys were very convincing. We then went to a few cool bars in town for a couple of drinks as we had to be up early the next morning for a full day Thai cooking course! 10 drinks later and 3am we arrived home! I don't know how we ever thought that we could manage a cooking course after a big night and a definite hangover in the morning!

It was safe to say that we didn't make it to the full days course but managed to change the course to the afternoon! When we arrived we got taken to the local food market to learn about the fresh ingredients that we would be cooking within our dishes. Sarah and I chose different dishes to cook so that we would learn as many as we could.
Once we had cooked our dishes we got to eat them, I can safely say that I cook the best chicken with cashew nuts in thailand! :).

The next day we went to tiger kingdom! Everybody that we had spoken to were very scepticle about going as they say the tigers are drugged, so there was only one way to find out!...we got a tuk tuk there and back which only cost us £4 and she waited 3 hours for us! Bargain!

At first we only bought a ticket to the smallest tigers which were 2months old and the way that they were playing with eachother and us, we could tell that they definitely weren't drugged in any way! We had good fun playing with them and took lots of pictures.
Once we had built up some dutch courage we thought we would go in with the medium tigers! Not going to lie I was scared for my life but wasn't giving to much away to Sarah! :)...We had 4 tigers in our cage with us and two trainers who were encouraging them to play around and jump onto logs. (Again if they were drugged we don't think they would have been up for this!)...at certain points the trainer would tell us that we could go and have pictures with them which was one of the scariest things I have ever done!!! Lets say I was very happy and relieved once I was back outside the cage!!

The next day we had a 6am start to go to Baan Chang elephant park which was another amazing experience!... When we arrived we changed into our uniforms for the day, we looked more like convicts than anything else, our guide then told us about the 37 elephants that they have at the park which had been rescued from the illegal logging industry and circus's. We then went around feeding them bananas and sugar cane which was really cool. (They can eat up to 200 kilos per day) We even got a kiss from 1 of them with his trunk! We then learnt basic commands on how to control our elephant and how to get on and off as we needed these to go on a small trek around the park. After an hour's ride we took them to the lake where we gave them a bath and a good back scrub!
We had such a fun day helping them as they have been treated badly in their past lives!

Next we are off to Pai.
See you there!
Matt